On Target

A slow economy produces many hiring paradoxes that can derail even astute hiring managers. Recessions tend to enhance retention and diminish recruiting in the sales world. This simple fact occurs as salespeople hunker down in their current positions even if they have a desire to find new opportunities. Salespeople who have found some modicum of success in their current positions face a major risk by trading that success for the unknown challenges of a new employer.

Many salespeople become available as companies are forced to lay off employees. That scenario presents an excellent opportunity to upgrade your sales team. Yet, selecting the right salesperson becomes more difficult, as bad candidates can provide believable scenarios for their present availability.

Successful recruiting during this economy requires a process for locating top sales talent while filtering out the misaligned candidates. Here are three steps to positively affect your hiring today.

The Risk—Hiring salespeople with the wrong skill sets for your sale. The most important step in a successful sales hiring process is identifying what factors are common to your sale. The reason behind this point is simple—You can’t ask a salesperson to close five, 50 or 500 deals if you can’t explain to him or to her how to close one deal. You must know certain parameters of your sale to find candidates who possess the talent and skills to succeed in that sales model.

What is your company’s primary value proposition? How is your company positioned in the market? How much time is spent prospecting for new customers vs. developing existing customers? What executive or management level does the salesperson have to sell? What stalls do salespeople typically face when qualifying prospective customers? Why do companies choose your solution?

These questions are of heightened importance during extended sales cycles common to slow economies. Budgets are tightened, prospects are deliberate in their buying processes, and decisions require upper management approval. If you do not account for these factors, you are bound to be frustrated with new sales hires who never achieve the desired revenue performance.

The Reward—Developing a blueprint to quickly identify the right salesperson for your position. The profile of your sale is the blueprint to guide you through the sales hiring process, especially when it comes to developing questions to ask candidates. Instead of the overused, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" ask pointed questions to reveal the candidate’s skills.

For instance, if your typical sale involves pricing pressure, you can now ask, "How do you put your solution’s value in play when prospects focus on price? Give me an example." That question structure will provide a glimpse into the candidate’s ability to discuss money. You will now have an initial, pivotal piece of information as you assess whether the candidate has the skills to sell your solution in your market.

The information you compile for the profile also provides a benchmark for comparing candidates with varied skill sets. This approach introduces objectivity into the hiring process. Objectivity is crucial to hiring in that it negates the desire for the sales manager to hire clones of himself. Most hiring managers have a subconscious preference toward candidates who have similar styles, skills and drive to their own. This cloning approach can lead to a team with a misaligned skill set. Profiling your sale keeps the focus on the sale itself as opposed to a candidate’s similarity to the sales manager’s style. As you develop your process, the next step will be to refine your information-gathering skills to investigate the candidate’s skills in comparison to those needed to succeed in your typical sale.

The Risk—Succumbing to a salesperson’s well-developed communication ability. Employment opportunities are at a premium in this economy, so salespeople will go to extremes to secure a valuable career opportunity. Almost all salespeople have well-refined communication abilities. Even "bad" salespeople can fake it long enough in an interview to appear stronger than they actually are. Every sales manager we have encountered has a sales hiring horror story that can be traced back to a crucial oversight—questioning.

Sales managers are generally hired to grow profitable revenue at the company. Hiring salespeople is an aspect of their responsibilities that gets moved to the margins of their days. Revenue is the priority that leads to hiring being pushed into convenient openings in their schedules. This is the simple reality of the modern-day manager.

In that light, a sales manager has his or her favorite interview questions that he or she uses for all candidates. If you combine a sales manager’s time limitations and standard questions, you see a potential for problems. Time for probing a candidate’s responses is limited. The sales manager’s favorite answers are the keys that get the candidate past his or her radar.

The Reward—Questioning skills that reveal the candidate’s true skill. Pursuing deeper answers to interview questions is something we call "drilling down." The key is to not settle for the candidate’s initial response but to follow up with a clarifying question. This question can be as simple as, "Can you tell me more about that?" to the more specific, "When you closed the largest order, how did you find the company and what was your initial approach?"

When interviewing, details matter; do not be satisfied with an initial, general response. The candidate has probably rehearsed many of his or her answers before the interview. This fact makes your delivery as important as your questions. Sales is a difficult position that requires a calm, unflappable salesperson. Therefore, take on the style of your average sales prospect.

If prospects are generally short and uninterested, sprinkle some of that behavior into your interaction with the candidate. If prospects are more relational on the approach call, develop an interview style that involves personal topics. The majority of prospects will not be overjoyed at receiving a cold call from an unknown salesperson. You should be slightly detached during the interview and make job candidates work. You will see firsthand how well they build rapport, whether they show frustration and how focused they are on succeeding in the interaction.

As the interviewer, you can now combine these elements to drill down to the unvarnished truth. Gently cut the candidate off to ask a follow-up question, clarify a point by stating you are confused about something, sigh and watch their reactions. These disarming techniques provide a glimpse of the real salesperson sitting in front of you. However, it can all be for naught if you do not follow the final step.

The Risk—Overvaluing industry experience in comparison to sales ability. A pervasive yet seemingly innocuous form of conventional wisdom exists today: Hire strictly from your industry. A quick survey of sales ads reveals a requirement of fill-in-the-blank years experience in the industry. Sales managers mention the need to recruit someone from the industry. HR chases candidates based on the experience listed on their resumes.

This intoxicating approach adheres to the belief that salespeople from your industry will ramp quickly, sell effectively and manage themselves independently. Perhaps that is a bit overstated, but those general beliefs guide this tactical approach.

And a high-risk approach it is.

Industry experience can be a valuable tool, but only when it is complementary to highly developed sales skills. Industry experience can be gained by salespeople no matter what level of ability they have. Granted, some will learn better than others, but all will learn the industry to some usable level.

On the other hand, some salespeople will never learn how to be effective at selling. Strong salespeople have intrinsic abilities that enable them to succeed where other people fail. Many of these abilities are difficult to acquire, while others are simply inherent to the salesperson and cannot be learned. This fact points to the necessity of focusing on sales skills and talent when hiring as opposed to overvaluing the more easily attained experience.

The Reward—Assembling a well-balanced sales team with no group weaknesses. Slow economies lead to experienced salespeople on the street, so it is important to have an understanding of what new strengths would benefit your team. The shift away from experience as the top hiring factor to sales ability provides the sales manager the opportunity to select skills to complement the existing team.

For instance, repeatedly hiring salespeople from a low-price competitor often leads to a sales team with a group weakness for qualifying budgets. If your team suffers from a weakness in this area, it is best to bring in salespeople with strong money-qualifying skills to offset the weakness.

Another example is a team that has order-taking tendencies that manifest themselves in a lack of prospecting within the group. Your next sales hiring process should focus on identifying a strong prospector regardless of his or her industry experience. Look for sales candidates from industries with similar sales models that have had success in their industry exhibiting the traits you desire. At this point, teaching the new salesperson about your industry will be immensely easier than teaching him or her how to be a strong prospector. This new prospecting salesperson will provide a skill set that will strengthen your team and help diversify the team’s overall abilities.

These suggestions provide the greatest impact at each stage of your hiring process. The first stage requires a well-conceived profile to guide the sales manager through the process. The profile becomes the reference point for assessing candidates. Drilling down into the candidates’ interview responses removes some of the sales manager’s bias in judging candidate ability. Finally, prioritizing ability over industry experience neutralizes the assumption that experience guarantees success.

Successful sales hiring is a difficult task for any sales manager in any economy. However, these simple adjustments will do more than simply mitigate the risk of making a bad hire; they turn the most difficult hiring process into a repeatable, bankable asset for your company.